Have some fun in this weekend's comments thread

Yet another week has passed, and we're starting to get into the home stretch of 2017. At least in the smartphone world. But it's cool — this time of the year makes for some great weekends.

Weekends at the end of summer are awesome. The weather isn't quite as hot so it's a great time to get outside and breathe some fresh air. Maybe fire up the grill, or take a hike, or do any of those things it was just too hot to do a few weeks ago. Heck, even the fish start biting again!

We're in prep-mode for the last big new phone push of the year. Google has their Pixel 2 shindig planned in about a week, and then we can take it all in and look at all the great products from the companies that make Android what it is. It's been a pretty good year for an Android fan. From the CES hype train to the Note 8 launch, we saw so many excellent phones from all the big names. We all will have a favorite, but I think everyone agrees that it's cool when everyone has a choice that they love.

So take a minute and share what you're doing over the weekend, and let everyone know what phone from 2017 caught your eye. We're not done just yet, but so far I'm feeling the G6 as the overall winner, even though it's not my personal choice. Oh, and I'm working this weekend, but doing it from my back porch where the hibiscus are still in bloom and mulberry trees keep me in the shade. For a few more weeks, anyway. 😎

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Have some fun in this weekend's comments thread

To be honest, I feel the exact opposite. 2017 has been a pretty horrible year when it comes to phones as far as I'm concerned.
I hate phablets or any phone I can't use with one hand and all 2017 flagships (worthy of that name, which excludes the XZ1 Compact unfortunately) are oversized and not that much better than the best of 2016.

I guess it might be because it's the first year of the shift to 2:1 screens and OEMs need to figure out the sizes of their phones. For example, the 5.8" S8 makes absolutely no sense with the S8 and Note 8 sizes next to it. So I hope to see Samsung adjust the screen sizes to more logical iterations in 2018 (5.5" on the S9, 6" on the S9+ and 6.5" on the S9 Note would be better solutions). Same for LG with the G at 5.8" and the V at 6" I mean...it's pretty much the same. If the G7 doesn't come down in size, it makes no sense to have it alongside the V30/V40).

Then there's the eternal hope that Sony wakes up and catches on with the times (and if it takes the iPhone X for them to do it, I'll be a little bit less harsh with Apple going forward) and that Nokia picks a new CEO for HMD that stops with the crap job that Sarvikas and his team have been doing.

And then there's that thing where, I mean...what exactly, apart from 2:1 screens, have 2017 phones added new? If you think about it...nothing. I haven't seen a single phone that I think "I need to replace this S7 with that". And I'm absolutely sure I won't be seeing it this year.

If I had to pick a phone to win 2017 though...I think I'd pick the V30. Not because it offers anything mindblowing but because it represents the much needed correction of the ship's trajectory that LG was taking. It I didn't hate the size, I'd pick it up because it pretty much has all of my main requisites from a flagship:
- wireless charging
- OLED display and the ability to add a black theme
- microSD expansion
- IP68
- great cameras with great manual controls.
- and double tap to wake and sleep (Which is pretty much mandatory to me on any phone that makes the wrong choice of putting the fingerprint scanner on the back)

The V30 actually gets extra points in my book because, like the G6, it's the only phone that does dual-cameras right.
The ultra-wide lens is far far more useful in day-to-day life than a monochrome lens or a zoom lens. For monochrome, apart from Huawei, no one seems to know how to take minimal advantage of it. For zoom, a far better option would be to have higher resolution cameras (which was the old Nokia approach) instead of the annoying 12mp shooters we've downgraded the phones to.
Going into 2018, I hope LG finishes improving the ultra-wide lens by adding OIS to it as well (and bumping the resolution). If the G7 comes with a 5.5" no-bezels display and all the things of the V30 plus OIS on the ultra-wide, it'll be a hell of a phone and hard to beat (and it will put Samsung in a hard spot if they don't figure under the display scanners in time again).

Yeah it's definitely getting tricky now that the smaller phones like the s8 are actually pretty big. I think you should check out the essential phone if you're looking for something compact. It's even shorter than the Pixel and it's all screen.

Though if you have an s7 now then getting a phone with no software features might not be interesting to you

The Essential is pretty interesting design wise. If that phone has any purpose existing, I hope it is to push more designs like that.
But that's it. It lacks pretty much all that I consider essential.
Plus no headphone jack (which I don't even admit not being present on a phone. What the hell is this? Cupertino? ahahahah).

Yeah, software is tricky. I don't like TouchWiz BUT i use Nova Launcher anyway. And with Android 8.0 supporting OMS and thus allowing theming, stock Android is slowly becoming more usable to me. But it still does a lot of things worse than non-stock (think split screen for example). Eventually by Android 10.1 it'll be good enough for me to be able to use stock Android.

Which I find very surprising considering the amount of crap he talked about Sammy on Windowscentral. When he moved to Android he was all about Sony. He couldn’t wait til the day he switched to Nokia on Android. Now Nokia is not even in his radar. That seems to belong to LG.

Allow me to clarify you since you're very out of date regarding what happened:
- September 2014: I jumped from the sinking WP ship as I said I would do once Nokia was out. I got the Z3 Compact as soon as Sony launched it, which, at the time, was an amazing phone.
- By October/November 2015: LG and Samsung really stepped up their game with the G4 and S6. Sony failed miserably to catch on with the times and fell behind. Hard. So I bought an LG G4 in November
- February 2016: the G4 motherboard died out of nowhere, joining the ranks of all the other G4's and V10's to whom either that or the bootloop issued happened.
- March 2016: Samsung launched the S7, fixing almost all that was wrong with the S6. So I bought it.

Now that you're up-to-date, I think you know where I stand. Also, HMD has so fair failed to produce a single phone worthy of the Nokia branding in it. You couldn't be more wrong in saying "Nokia is not even in his radar". It very much is. It doesn't mean I'm willing to buy any crap HMD does and slaps the Nokia brand in them. There's quite a difference. The Nokia 8 is not a flagship worthy of that name. The Lumia 930 - apart from the dead OS and obviously outdated internals now - is a better flagship than the Nokia 8.
I still can't wait for the day I can switch to a Nokia Android flagship. HMD simply hasn't produced one worthy of the Nokia brand yet. Which is why their CEO was kicked out by Nokia.

As for Samsung...I still really dislike it. In fact, the Note 7 debacle pretty much made me think the S7 was the exception that confirms the rule. I really like the S7. But I don't like Samsung as a company or trust it any more than I did before it.

In the 90's until Wednesday here in Grand Rapids. It's warmer in the fall now then it has been all summer!!! I also received my S8 yesterday from Verizon, free. Just need to pay off my V20 over the next year and I'm all set. Wish it was the S8+ personally, but I pushed it as far as I could.

Gonna order my Note8 tomorrow. 50% off for me as a former 7 owner. Now, I can't pass that by! Otherwise I'd waited till next year when they, hopefully, have fingerprint sensor under the front glass. But with a deal like this I gotta have it! 😁

It's hot here too, and I just added a shot of freon to the air-conditioning in the car to make it colder. No concerts or anything for me this weekend, and I'm glad to have a break. The last big one went well despite not having as much power for the mains as I wanted. I used the eight 18 inch subwoofers they had to take loading off the mains and give the impression of more power than we had, and did a lot of mixing by EQ instead of volume. The crowd loved it, so that's what matters. Had a group of girls waiting to see me afterwards, so that's usually a good indication it went well ;)

I'm getting a chuckle out of Apple's iPhone 8 claims of "70% faster" than the iPhone 7. Then when they do a side by side comparison, it's real-world difference is less than 5%. Meanwhile, the U11 (which is faster than the iPhone 8) just keeps getting better as you settle into a routine. Not charging while listening to music is a non issue when the phone will go more than 24 hours without a charge. 14 hours of use leaves me with 70% battery, and even when I'm hitting Youtube hard, I often fall asleep with the phone at 30% or better. I'm keeping screenshots of course. I've decided that USonic at work is not a good thing. It's distractingly immersive, and what you think will be a quick listen turns into you being lost in the music with your eyes closed, or staring at your computer screen because you cannot focus on your work. Normal earphones are better in this situation. But I have to say that when I DO use USonic, I love hearing all the details I miss at other times. I've been picking up an new genres of music for the variety of instruments, recording techniques, and content, and it been fun. A lot of the material is a far cry from the Who and Boston and Supertramp I grew up with, and even different from jazz and classical and R&B I mostly enjoy now. but you have to keep an open mind when you have to work with different types of music. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of South Korean pop music is not afraid to leave the filters off and run the frequencies all the way down to sub bass frequencies. Some songs in particular (like Red Light, or Rum Pum Pum Pum by F(x)), have content that you can't even hear on full size audiophile headphones, yet those little USonic earphones handle it effortlessly.

It's been a horrible week for alone time, and interruptions to any romantic intentions are so perfectly timed that we feel like we are on the Truman Show. Last night was ruined on cue as expected, and our evening ended by falling asleep watching "Person of Interest" on the phone.

It was a nice day yesterday, so I did some soldering. It was a little harder than I expected. Mostly, I imagine because my soldering iron was cheapo. Now I don’t have to worry about my car automatically switching to my radio when hooked up to aux connection. So, I can finally use my phone to its full potential hands-free.

This weekend I plan on cleaning out my closet. Getting rid of some boxes. And maybe hit that game collection I have. It’s not many, but I feel every day is a Gears day. That game seems to be all I play. Although I can control myself better than when I played Gears 2 when that came out.

Working all weekend on what feels like summer's return. Otherwise wishing we could get to mid October so that all the Q4 phone announcement so that I can finally upgrade. Also, what is Moto thinking releasing the G5S+ and the X4? They're identical except for the Q625 v Q630.

"Weekends at the end of summer are awesome. The weather isn't quite as hot so it's a great time to get outside and breathe some fresh air."

Up here in Michigan, we are having record temps, warmest it's been all year. Got to 94 today.

On the G6, I've had mine almost a month now. I was holding out for the V30 but found myself needing to add a line for my kid and took advantage of a BOGO on a pair of G6's at T-Mobile last month. Don't regret it, while the nerd in me wants the higher specs of the the V30 I can't find anything wrong with the G6. Especially for $250 each essentially. People need to look at LG more. This is a great device. I may still spring for the V30 but not because the G6 isn't fully capable and a great phone.